Major Jackson, poet, author and University of Vermont professor, inside his office in 2010. / Free Press file photo

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Major Jackson, a poet and professor of English at the University of Vermont, is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

The award, established in 1925, is among the most distinct and prestigious honors an artist or a scholar can achieve.

“I can no longer say I’m a young poet,” Jackson, 44, said Thursday morning.

Jackson was making a reference to the Guggenheim, which is known as a “mid-career” fellowship. The award is “intended for men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship and creative ability in the arts,” according to the website of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Each year, about 200 fellowships are awarded from more than 3,500 applications, according to the foundation.

Jackson, who has known for several weeks he was a fellowship finalist, learned he was a recipient by email Wednesday. “I was really happy to get that email yesterday,” he said.

To celebrate, he had dinner alone at Pistou — lamb terrine and pasta. “And I opened a bottle of wine, and let it sink in on me,” Jackson said. “I thought about it.”

He thought about the proposal he had written as part of his application, the work he would do if he were awarded a fellowship — money that will allow him to take time off from teaching to concentrate on writing.

Jackson intends to write a collection of poems about a black sculptor, Edmonia Lewis, who attended Oberlin College before and during the Civil War. Subsequently, she joined a group of female sculptors who worked in Rome.

Lewis was accused of poisoning her roommates; her lawyer was the great-uncle of the poet Langston Hughes, Jackson said.

“My hope, in my most ambitious mind,” he said, “I want to write a verse play about that trial. That’s my great ambition.”

Jackson said the Guggenheim will allow him to take a semester off — and preferably a year — to research and write a book about Lewis.

“Now it’s time for me to get to the task of writing,” Jackson said. “I love teaching, for sure. And I love sharing my passion. I love sharing the poets and the poems. But even more, I am thrilled when I am writing.

“It wears on me, emotionally and psychologically and intellectually. But whenever I finish either a poem, or I finish a book, it’s just a wonder that comes in the world. It’s almost like a dream when you look back on it. Some poems, I remember just where I was when I wrote it. Others I wonder: where did you come from?”

Jackson is flying to New York City today for a poetry reading tonight that features poets who are published in a new anthology, the 25th anniversary edition of the “Best of the Best American Poetry,” edited by Robert Pinsky.

A poem from the “Urban Renewal” section of Jackson’s book, “Hoops,” was selected for and is published in the “Best of the Best” collection. Edward Hirsch, a poet and president of the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, is expected to be at tonight’s reading.